If It Brings You Home
by Tonight.At.Noon
Summary: Single father Nathan Scott is lost. The only source of happiness in his world comes in the form of his six-year-old son, Jamie. Out a nanny, Nathan's brother suggests he hire Haley James, a former classmate of theirs whose mysterious reappearance in town pushes Nathan to take his brother's advice.
**A/N:** I've been in love with these two since I was a young girl. Thought it was time I tried them out.

This is completely an AU story. I'll be revealing just how AU over the course of this story (which shouldn't be too long).

Title comes from the Wakey Wakey song "Brooklyn".

 **DISCLAIMER: I OWN NOTHING.**

Enjoy.

* * *

 _I hope I see you soon_

 _Because you're fond of me_

 _And I am fond of you._

* * *

 **If It Brings You Home | One**

* * *

Someone slapped a drink in front of him, startling him out of his own head. Steadily, the sounds inside TRIC wafted back into focus. He'd forgotten how much he disliked coming on open-mic night. Too many drunk people with not enough talent.

"I didn't order this, Luke," Nathan said, raising his eyebrows at the man behind the bar. He shoved the drink back determinedly.

"Come on little brother, one drink."

Sighing loudly, Nathan rubbed his fingers over his stubbled jaw. He needed to shave. "I thought I asked you to stop calling me that," he said. "Ten years ago."

Lucas, his older half-brother by less than six months, laughed heartily as if Nathan had just uttered the cleverest joke in all the world. "Why aren't you indulging? It's your night off. From _everything_."

The way Luke stressed the word "everything" made Nathan's heart stutter. It was true, of course. This was his night off from everything. From all those horrid responsibilities he'd acquired over the years. He didn't have to worry about his job tonight, and he didn't have to worry about his family. But he was. He couldn't help it. No matter how often Luke told him to let it all go for _just a few hours,_ it was still buzzing in the back of his mind, keeping him from enjoying himself.

"You know I can't, Lucas. Jamie hates it when I drink." And instantly, with the mention of his son—his pride, Nathan's only source of joy in the world—Lucas's face sobered, the cocky grin he'd been wearing falling off, replaced instead by an understanding crooked line.

"Alright," his older brother conceded, lifting his hands in surrender, "I get it. I'll leave you alone. But you are not allowed to leave. You understand?" Lucas pointed a finger at Nathan's blue eyes until they crossed.

Nathan frowned. "Why am I not allowed to leave? I'm twenty-four, I've got a right to come and go as I please."

Backing away from him, Lucas smiled his secretive smile. Nathan hated that particular smile. "Oh, little brother, I've got a surprise for you."

He hated surprises too. So, he said, "I hate surprises."

"Not this one," Lucas informed him, exiting from behind the bar.

Nathan watched as his brother, sandy-hair and rock-star style and all, headed behind the stage curtain. He shouldn't have come tonight. He should be at his crappy apartment with his son, reading bedtime stories and looking under the bed for monsters.

"What was my husband talking to you about?"

Turning his whole body around, Nathan came face to face with his very, incredibly about-to-burst sister-in-law.

"Peyton, you look positively radiant tonight," he commented, a natural smile wafting over his face. He leaned down and kissed her pale cheek. "He was telling me about some surprise he's got planned for me. To be honest, I'm scared. Do you think he's finally grown tired of being the inferior Scott brother and has decided to pull a _Hamlet_ and kill me?"

Peyton laughed heartily, one hand attached to her belly. Nathan blinked at the sight, a powerful, painful memory washing over him.

 _Stars twinkled like headlights behind his eyelids. He felt incredibly sick despite the fact that he'd already vomited twice._

" _Say something," she said urgently._

 _Nathan opened his eyes, his head still bowed. The grass was covered with his lunch, but he didn't care. All he wanted to do was collapse on the ground and never get up._

 _Say something? What the hell was he supposed to say? How was one meant to react in this news?_

 _Slowly, Nathan inhaled a breath. He let it whoosh out before wiping his sweaty hands on his basketball shorts and standing back to his full height._

 _He looked down at her. She was so much smaller than him. He always knew he'd break her somehow. A hand covered her tiny stomach._

 _He was going to throw up again if he didn't look away. Bringing his eyes up to her face, he noticed she was crying. Once upon a time he'd have been able to reach out for her and wipe the tears off her cheeks, but she'd already told him she didn't want him doing that anymore._

" _What"— he choked, smoke filling his lungs. He coughed. "What are you going…to do?"_

" _I want to keep him," she told him._

" _Him?" Nathan asked, his mind racing._

 _She shook her head sadly. "I don't know yet, but I have a feeling."_

 _Silence swallowed them for a few minutes. The river court looked beautiful at this time of day. The sun was just about to set. Everything looked as though it was on fire. Which was fitting considering Nathan's entire body was seconds away from combusting._

" _And what about me?" Nathan asked eventually. Fear bit his scalp, but he remained as stoic as he possibly could._

 _He saw the answer before she spoke. He wanted to tell her that she didn't need to say it—he got it, he didn't need confirmation._

 _But she said it anyway. "No, Nathan. I want to do this by myself."_

" _By yourself?" he nearly screeched, not sure where he was going with this. "You're eighteen._ I'm _eighteen. We've been together since freshman_ _year and you want to do this by_ _yourself? What about_ me _?"_

" _What about you?" she spat, and Nathan retreated as if she'd bitten him. "You got me into this mess. What would your dad say about you helping me?"_

" _Dan has nothing to do with this. We're adults, Rach. I want to help." He said the words before thinking about them, but the second they left his lips was the second he realised they were true. "I want to help," he repeated._

" _You want to help, Nate?" she mocked. She could be cruel when she wanted. That was what made them such a great team. "Let me do this on my own. You'll bring nothing but trouble."_

"I'd watch your back if I were you," Peyton said, slapping his shoulder and effectively bringing him out of his depressing stupor.

Ignoring the painful pinch in his head, Nathan laughed. "Yeah, I'll do that," he said. "Really though, you've got no clue what he's organised?"

"Not a clue. It's your birthday, though. He may or may not have hired strippers."

Nathan groaned. "Oh, God. Please tell me Tim didn't order them again."

Peyton raised an eyebrow at him. "Again?"

"Uh, did I say 'again?'" Nathan asked awkwardly. He ran a hand through his hair. He was always such a bad liar.

"You did, yeah. When did he last order strippers, Nate?"

Peyton's southern accent did this amazing thing where, when she got really mad, it got thicker and thicker until Nathan could barely understand a word of what she was saying.

"How long have you and Luke been married?" he asked playfully, but Peyton didn't seem to be in the mood for games. He groaned again. "Ugh, fine, Tim got strippers for Luke's bachelor party. Only it turned out that he'd ordered men…"

Thankfully, the sound of clapping and the odd cheer distracted them both from the horribly awkward conversation. Nathan hadn't been paying attention to whoever was on stage, but apparently they were good.

"That's Mia," Peyton shouted into his ear, pointing at the young girl on the platform. Black hair, tight dress, small everything.

"How old is she?"

"Seventeen! How cool is that. Not even out of high school and already in the process of getting signed by my label," Peyton gushed. How the woman had time to sign so many acts and work so many long hours was completely beyond him. Especially considering she was seven-and-a-half months pregnant.

Nathan tapped his chin. "That's pretty amazing, yeah," he agreed, watching as Mia took another bow and sauntered off the stage, her guitar swinging against her tiny hips.

When the applause had died down, Lucas burst through the stage curtains, a stupid grin plastered on his face. Nathan frowned. Lucas never came out until everyone had performed, and that was only to say goodnight to the crowd. There was still a hoard of anxious singers waiting by the steps, which meant the evening was far from over.

Rubbing his forehead, Nathan took a step back. He did not want to know what horrible surprise his brother had put together. He was not, under any circumstances, singing. That was where he drew the line. The thick, lava-coated, spider-infested line.

Reaching the microphone, Lucas bent down and tapped its foamy coating. A loud whine echoed through the club. "Hello everybody!" Lucas shrieked, causing yet another whine. "Whoops, sorry," he laughed, and Nathan took another step back. On any other day he'd be happy to call Lucas his brother, but today…

"Right, well, while I'm sure you all enjoyed listening to Mia," Luke continued, garnering a cheer from the audience, "I'd like to introduce a very special someone to the stage."

Nathan's heart began to race. Luke was looking right at him, a smirk dancing on his lips. This couldn't be good. Should he call Jamie now and tell him he loved him, just in case he didn't end up coming home tonight?

"Ladies and gentleman, please welcome the very talented, beautiful, spectacular Haley James!"

As he shouted the last two words, all of TRIC went dark, the only source of light coming from the various EXIT signs emitting their reddish, haunting glow. Nathan turned his head every which way, but nobody else seemed as concerned as him. Even Peyton looked fairly relaxed.

Inhaling a calming breath while simultaneously thanking God that _he_ wasn't the one about to perform, Nathan returned his attention to the stage.

Haley James? He hadn't heard that name in a long time. She'd gone to high school with him and the gang. They'd had a couple of classes together, he thought. Maybe. She was smart. Valedictorian smart. Gave a beautiful speech at graduation that moved his mother to tears. One that included talks of bright futures and making dreams come true.

He'd nearly cried as well.

He knew she'd started a singing career with some lowlife. Chris Something-Or-Other. Peyton occasionally brought their progress in the music world up at family dinner night. They were supposedly doing well for themselves.

So what was she doing here, performing by herself? As far as he was aware, she hadn't been back to Tree Hill since she left six years ago.

Nathan watched with fascination as a girl—a woman, really, complete with honey-blond hair that grazed her shoulders and a red, short-sleeved dress—stepped through the curtain and onto the platform, a guitar strapped around her neck. She smiled at the audience briefly before grabbing a stool and dragging it in front of the microphone. Haley James adjusted the mic stand and brought her guitar to her lap, the fingers of her left hand grasping its neck.

"Wow," she breathed into the mic, eyes scanning the crowd. "I haven't been here since I was a senior in high school." The words sounded wistful and sad, but Nathan wasn't really paying attention.

She was telling the truth. The last time he had seen Haley James was three days after graduation. He was holding a baby boy wrapped in blue blankets, a pacifier in his mouth. He wasn't hiding, not really, but from where he sat on a bench by the river court he could see everything. And nothing could see him.

As he had soothed the child in his arms to sleep, he heard a car pulling into the small lot next to the court. Nathan twisted his neck only to see a tear-stained, blotchy-faced Haley James walking to the centre of the basketball court.

She held a basketball, which had shocked the hell out of him, and started dribbling it immediately after stepping onto the blacktop. He had watched in complete silence as she took a few shots, all of them landing squarely in the basket.

Five minutes in, Nathan had realised he was staring. _Staring_. At Haley James, no less. And she was pretty good at basketball for someone so short.

Watching Haley had depressed him. It had reminded him of all the things he would no longer be able to do thanks to the baby sleeping against his chest.

He hadn't known why she was sad, or why she was taking her sadness out on the basketball court, but he did know that a week later Peyton told him she and some guy named Chris had signed a record deal together in California and were in the process of writing their debut album. And he was still in Tree Hill, North Carolina struggling to get enough sleep for his community college courses, no basketballs in sight.

"But you don't care about that, do you?" Haley laughed, and the crowd laughed with her.

Nathan brought his attention back to the present.

"Okay, so I'm gonna sing some original songs for you guys. I hope you like them."

Haley strummed her guitar, a long set of haunting notes wafting over Nathan, setting his hair on-end.

She looked different, didn't she? He was about to lean over and ask Peyton if she thought Haley looked different too, but decided that would be creepy and weird. Of course she looked different. It had been six years since he'd seen her. Everyone looked different after six years.

He especially.

When he looked in the mirror nowadays, all he saw were lines that definitely hadn't been there a few years ago. Bags beneath his eyes that bulged and turned purple. Grey in his hair that didn't belong on someone so young. But he was always so stressed about everything in his life. He didn't really have time to _care_ about any of those things.

" _The girl in the moon/ is alone with the stars/ and the spaceships/ The girl in the moon/ is alone and alive/ with the dust in the air_ ," sang Haley, the steady flow of her voice silencing any of the mindless chitchat that had once occupied the club.

Nathan knew nothing of music. His youth was filled with basketball and trying to get good enough grades to stay on the team, which only meant keeping a C+ average. Dan Scott, rest his useless soul, had never let him enjoy being young. He wasn't allowed movie nights, not even on the weekends, and he definitely wasn't allowed to waste money on talentless people. That was what his father called musicians.

Maybe if Dan had been slightly more lenient during his childhood, maybe if he'd actually been given permission to explore the music scene, he'd know what Haley was singing about. But all he knew was she sounded like a siren, and it was as if she was calling to him. Caressing his ears with her voice. Singing directly to his soul.

Shaking his head, Nate took a moment to digest what had just flowed through his extremely prissy brain. He quickly came to the conclusion that he disliked everything he'd thought as each word made him sound more and more like a hopeless romantic. Something he definitely was not.

Either way, he leant over to Peyton, whose body was flowing in time with Haley's guitar.

"What's she talking about?" he whispered, afraid of disturbing the peace.

Peyton turned to face him. He leaned away slightly, eyebrows up in expectation.

"You want to know what the song means?" Peyton inquired skeptically. Nathan nodded his head, but Peyton didn't seem convinced. Her body turned toward him, and he was nearly knocked back by her belly. "Since when did you care about music?"

Did he really need to justify his question? It was completely innocent in his eyes.

"You don't have to tell me," he said quickly, in case his question really was cause for concern.

He didn't need Peyton to be concerned about it in her state. She was immensely obsessed with music, and oftentimes got herself so worked up about it, she'd end up having to take a breather. Since she got pregnant, Lucas had been steadily guiding her away from work, worried the baby would pop out at the record studio.

Suffice it to say, Nathan's big brother would not be pleased if he got Peyton talking about music. God knew the girl's enthusiasm for the subject never wained.

"I see that look in your eye. You're being genuine," Peyton said, laughing a little. "What exactly do you want to know?"

Nathan thought about his sister-in-law's question for a moment before responding. He looked over at Haley, singing with her eyes shut and her mouth covering the microphone as if she wanted to melt into it. She seemed to be so in her element, like it was nothing but her and the music inside of the club. Nobody else was there.

"Something simple," he decided. "Just—what's she saying?"

Peyton didn't miss a beat. Immediately she launched into an explanation, "She misses home. Where she is now, up there on the moon, she feels isolated and alone. All she really wants is to come back down to earth to be with the people she loves. Simple enough for you?"

It was a metaphor, Nathan realised now. The girl in the moon. Haley was the girl, but the moon was not a planet far above their heads—it was a land across the United States where the famous go to live out their lives. And she didn't like it anymore.

She missed Tree Hill.

How could someone who made it out of here at eighteen miss it so much? Nathan found himself wishing every night he could escape with Jamie.

Haley James sang two more songs before she ended her set with a smile and walked off stage. The crowd cheered and clapped and wouldn't stop until Luke told them all to shut up, TRIC was closing now. The youngsters and oldsters alike disbanded. They gathered their things and left.

Hopping off of the stage, Lucas came up to Nathan, that giddy smile back in its usual place. "What did you think?"

Nathan creased his forehead in a way he knew would seem inquisitive. "She was an awful stripper. I'd ask for my money back if I were you."

"What? No, don't you remember her? From school? Haley, the smart girl who ran away with that douche who played the guitar . . ." Lucas trailed off, realisation dawning on his gullible face. "You're messing with me," he said.

Nathan bobbed his head once. "Gotcha. Seriously, though, she was amazing. I'm still expecting a tangible present, but hearing that was enjoyable."

"Ah," Luke sighed happily, "but you see, she is a tangible present."

Snapping his fingers, Nathan smiled. "I knew it. She _is_ a stripper. I feel like I need to throw this in Peyton's face. Where is she?"

Nathan looked around the deserted night club until Lucas's grunt distracted him from his task. The older Scott boy stared at his brother. "What?"

"She's not a stripper. She's looking for a job, and I thought she could help out with Jamie as a nanny or something. She'll be singing here every Friday for some cash, but you're the rich bastard with a little boy who's crazy about not spending money on things you don't need. And, let's be honest, you need a new nanny."

Nathan knew Haley hadn't turned to taking her clothes off for money. She was too brilliant for that. He had still been teasing Luke when he said it the second time, but he felt foolish for even making the joke in the first place.

"You did just let go of your previous one for hitting on you too many times," Luke reminded him.

That was true. While Gigi had been helpful in the beginning, the sorority girl eventually moved her sole focus from his son to him, making his life extremely difficult and stressful. More so than it already was.

"What are her credentials?" Nathan found himself asking.

Lucas's entire face brightened. He had always loved helping people a little too much. "You'll give her a shot?"

"A shot, yeah. It couldn't hurt. I'm getting tired of reminding my mom what _not_ to do when a six-year-old is in the house," he admitted. "Give me her number, I'll call her tomorrow when I get off of work."

His big brother silently reached into his pocket for his phone, hitting a few buttons until Nathan's front pocket vibrated.

"There you go," Luke said. "I'll go tell her you'll be in contact. She'll thank you for the opportunity, Nate, even if you don't end up giving her the job. Which," he added, bringing his head down, "would be stupid of you. I know you never talked to her that much in high school, but I did. She's a wonderful person. Treat her like one."

Lucas was talking to him as if he had never dealt with a woman before, as if his entire summer post-graduation were not the hardest months of his life because of Rachel. As if the months following were not equally as difficult because of her sudden absence.

"What happened?" Nathan asked. "What happened with her and the musician?"

Lucas shrugged. "I don't know. All I know is she's alone right now."

The conversation ended there. Lucas needed to finish shutting the club down and Nathan needed, badly, to return home to his boy, if only to save his mother from having a nervous breakdown. When he entered his tiny apartment following the ten minute drive, the floor littered with toys and books and food, he found Jamie asleep in bed, his mother asleep on the lumpy sofa in the living room.

 _Typical_ , he thought to himself as he started cleaning, throwing the plastic cars into their bin and banana peels into the bin. His mother never did like cleaning up after herself. Why should he expect her to be able to clean up after her grandson?

Once the apartment was spotless (well, there was a faded brown stain on the carpet he told himself was _coffee_ and not _dried_ _blood_ ), Nathan crept into his son's room and leaned against the doorframe, watching as the devilish child with the angelic smile slept, his chest rising and falling with deep, sleep-filled breaths.

He loved him. With all of his heart and his soul, he loved the boy passed out on his uncomfortable mattress that had been stitched back together too many times to count because he refused to sleep on anything else. He loved him more than air. More than _basketball_.

He wondered if his father ever loved him more than basketball. If Rachel loved their son—wherever the hell she was—more than she loved clothes.

Probably not, he decided, but he was okay with that. As long as he was there to love James more than anything, he could live with nobody else loving him. He just wasn't sure if James could do the same.

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 **A/N 2:** Interested in what happens next? Drop me a line!


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